Bits: use Avios on new Finnair routes, €1188 Club Suite to Dubai, bonus Accor points in December

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News in brief:

Finnair adds more new routes for 2022

Barely a month goes by at the moment without a new route announcement from Finnair, a British Airways partner in the oneworld alliance.

Last month we covered the start of services to Busan in South Korea, Tokyo Haneda and Sapporo.

It is also bulking up on the Heathrow to Helsinki route as well as building a new base in Stockholm to compete with SAS.

Finnair has just announced a new route from Helsinki to Seattle.

It will launch on 1st June. There will be three flights per week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Seattle will operate alongside Finnair’s existing routes from Helsinki to Dallas, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The airline has also announced that its flights from Stockholm to New York and Los Angeles will continue for the Summer 2022 season. From 1st May, Stockholm to New York will operate daily and Los Angeles will operate four times per week.

Finnair has recently cut the taxes and charges on redemption flights sharply as we showed in this article. Book a redemption in Business Class from Helsinki to Seoul on Avios, for example, and you only pay £30 in taxes and charges! The US routes are not as cheap, unfortunately, as Finnair’s hands are tied by the terms of its joint venture agreement with BA, Iberia and American Airlines.

Avios seats can be booked on ba.com in the usual way. Remember that you cannot use a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher on Finnair, and that partner redemptions do not have off-peak pricing – all dates are peak dates.

The latest Finnair business class seat on the A350 is pictured below. We reviewed Finnair’s A350 business class seat and service here.

Fly to Dubai in British Airways Club Suite for €1,188 (£1,009)

British Airways has launched some enticing £1,000 Club Suite fares to Dubai. The bad news is that you will need to start your trip in Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia before connecting in London. The comments below suggest that this also works from Portugal and possibly other countries in southern Europe.

Here is an example from early March. The fare seems widely available as long as you stay three nights:

You could skip the last leg from London to Spain as long as you were only flying with hand baggage. Checked bags will be automatically sent to the Spanish flight if your connecting flight departs from Heathrow.

You MUST fly to Spain to take the first flight. Your entire ticket will be automatically cancelled if you fail to check-in in Spain and try to board in London instead.

Whilst it is clearly a bit of a diversion, I think that if you spent a night in Spain on the way it would make it into more a two-centre holiday.

Hat-tip to Luxury Flight Club.

Earn double Accor Live Limitless points on December stays

Accor Live Limitless is running a promotion for double or triple points on stays you do in selected European countries before the end of the year.

As usual with Accor, there is a bit of faff involved:

you must register for the offer before booking via this page of the Accor website

you will earn double base points on 2-night stays and triple base points on 3+ night stays

you can earn each bonus twice – this implies that if you did 3 x 3-night stays you would only get a bonus on two of them, but if you did 2 x 3-night stays and 1 x 2-night stay you would get a bonus on all three!

you must book by 20th December

you must stay by 30th December

your stay must be in Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Ukraine or the United Kingdom

What are triple Accor points worth?

Our article on what we think Accor Live Limitless points are worth is here.

1 point is worth 2 Eurocents off your next booking, although you need to redeem in chunks of 2,000 points.

The standard earn rate at most brands is 2.5 points per €1. Triple base points means 7.5 points per €1. This means 15 Eurocents of free stays for every €1 you spend, pre-tax, which is a decent return. Anyone with elite status will earn even more.

You can also transfer your Accor points to Avios although you lose value compared to using them for a discount on a future stay.

You can find out more, and register for double or triple points, here.

If you want to learn more about Accor Live Limitless, our full review of the scheme is here.

Category

Accor Live Limitless, British Airways and Avios, Finnair and Finnair Plus

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Harry T says:

8 Dec8 December 05:59

What dates are the exSpain Dubai flights available? The link to LFC only takes me to a generic page that doesn’t mention the offer.
- tony says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 06:54
  
  Google flights works well for this as there’s a calendar of prices returned
  
  Note it’s available from other Spanish cities, too. I just put in Malaga and it was £1005 for March 9-13
  
  And similar fares are available from many, many cities right across Europe. Lisbon for £1010, Paris (or Lyon if you want to pair with a skiing break) for £1064
  - Harry T says:
    
    8 Dec8 December 07:59
    
    Thanks. I’m actually travelling to and from Dubai at present on a similar fare from CDG. BA rather considerately also cancelled the LHR-CDG leg I was going to tragically miss.
    - Polly says:
      
      8 Dec8 December 09:01
      
      Convenient then! Have a great trip
    - Lady London says:
      
      8 Dec8 December 12:26
      
      🙂
- Rob says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 07:45
  
  It’s not on the site yet, it was in their email blast.
- Sarah says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 09:23
  
  Members get prior notice of some really good offers – book before January 17 and it is for dates up to the end of June.
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 11:03
  
  Google flights shows a low fare for exCDG but when it goes through to BA site its about 600 EUR more.
  
  Flying via CDG is actually easier for me than getting to LHR on train!
Polly says:

8 Dec8 December 07:07

Tony, that’s good info.
Yes, this is a good deal, worth a look, even if we are put off flying for a while. Like the idea of the 2 centre trip.
Like we were used to doing ex eu QR J sales Scandinavia to Asia. Gosh, in this current world of travel, did those trips even happen? Hard to believe just how easy it was then to just jump on a plane, no grief.

Rob, will you be changing flights now to try this for one of your DBX trips? Or is time too short with hols?
NorthernLass says:

8 Dec8 December 07:09

Has BA re-started Valencia then? There was nothing at all showing the last few times I looked.
- The Original Nick. says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 07:34
  
  I flew BA LHR – VLC in October.
  - NorthernLass says:
    
    8 Dec8 December 08:00
    
    There was no 2022 schedule when I looked but now seems to be 1 per day each from LHR and LGW.
    - Richie says:
      
      8 Dec8 December 12:18
      
      Btw S22 timetable has a Vueling operated flight with a BA flight number from LGW-VLC.
tony says:

8 Dec8 December 08:05

probably worth adding that LX seem to be offering sub £1k fares to DXB from London as well, so 1) it’s a bit cheaper 2) is 4 flights instead of 5 or 6 and 3) means you’re officially transiting a 3rd country rather than arriving & departing, incase that makes a difference for the evolving COVID restrictions.
- Colin MacKinnon says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 09:37
  
  I book that. Lufthansa back to Edinburgh – so a great deal for Scots!
Bluekjp says:

8 Dec8 December 08:15

You can check bags in for the return and collect them if your ‘connection’ includes and overnight in London. But, there must be less than 24 hours between landing in LHR and departing to your final point in order to avoid a, usually, hefty stopover fee. The other way to have your bags appear on the baggage reclaim (in normal times) is to arrive LHR but book your connection from LGW. However, there aren’t European destination flights operating from that airport just yet, but that will soon change of course.
- Asim says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 08:50
  
  The stopover fee for stopping for more than 24hrs is usually £100
  - tony says:
    
    8 Dec8 December 09:08
    
    And the bonus APD, which if you break the journey on the outbound leg will add around another 20% to the cost…
  - Rob says:
    
    8 Dec8 December 09:10
    
    … plus Air Passenger Duty, which triggers at that point.
    - Robert says:
      
      8 Dec8 December 09:19
      
      Thanks for this article and the tips, great way to do a double header break if Asia remains closed in Spring. Happy to arrive back in Madrid at 10:50am from Dubai then complete MAD-NCL later the same day.
- NorthernLass says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 09:16
  
  VLC from LGW.
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 11:05
  
  Problem he is the cheap fares is the 2:30 departure and not many flights leave the next morning with 24hrs of the 6am landing.
  - Robert says:
    
    8 Dec8 December 13:21
    
    I’ve opted for 17:20 out of MAD that gets us on the 20:45 out of LHR which is the A350 service. Landing in Dubai at 07:45 is probably not great but hopefully dump luggage in hotel while waiting for room
    - TGLoyalty says:
      
      8 Dec8 December 16:10
      
      Comment above was in regards to the return.
      
      If you can do the connection with an overnight you can drop the last leg with HBO
      - Robert says:
        
        8 Dec8 December 17:11
        
        It is trickier to make it work as HBO, no way we can do HBO anyway for a dual trip so will stay in the air and rack up some extra TPs!
Mikee says:

8 Dec8 December 13:21

For those arriving at T5 and unable to use the BA Arrivals lounge due to COVID closure, I can thoroughly recommend Kanishka Kitchen on the departures level behind check-in.
Just landed and had one of their bundle deals of a rice bowl with drink for £7.50. Excellent food quality, value and service. Good selection of vegetarian and meat dishes too.
- Sarah says:
  
  8 Dec8 December 15:32
  
  Thanks for the recommendation- there next week so will try that.
Alan says:

9 Dec9 December 01:17

What a rubbish and unappealing offer from Accor – they really know how to make them the worst possible don’t they! 🤦